The death of the amazon

摘要

I have in my filing cabinet a well-thumbed and rather tatty printout of a paper that was published in Nature back in November 2000. Stapled onto the back of it is a page of scribbles written by me at the time, expressing startled disbelief at its contents. This paper, perhaps more than any other I have read, convinced me that this book needed writing - not just because of what it said, but because of the reception it got. Despite containing one of the most alarming projects ever published in the scientific literature, barely a ripple was caused in the media or political circles. There should have been panic on the streets, people shouting from rooftops, statements to Parliament and 24-hour news coverage. There were none of these things. The paper, modestly entitled 'Acceleration of global warming due to carbon cycle feedbacks in a coupled climate model', and written by a team from Britain's Hadley Centre, was largely ignored.